Indonesian tourism, badly hit by the devastating October 12 Bali bomb attack, recovered significantly in December, the Bureau of Statistics announced.
The blasts on the resort island killed almost 200 people, most of them foreigners. In the weeks that followed occupancy rates at some Bali hotels fell to single-digit levels. But the bureau said this week that foreign tourist visits to Indonesia rose 17.6 per cent in December to 281,928, from 239,774 in November. "Tourism had shown some recovery from the Bali tragedy on October 12" while still falling short of normal levels, the bureau said. While the December visitor numbers were still about seven per cent lower than in 2001, they were better than many had hoped after the blasts and the global media attention they received.